Everlost Read Free Page A

saw her, he was ignoring her.
    â€œAllie!” shouted Nick.
    â€œOkay, okay.” With plenty of time to spare, Allie tried to hop out of the way … only she couldn’t hop. She lost her balance, but didn’t fall. Her feet wouldn’t let her. She looked down, and at first it looked like she had no feet. It was a moment before she realized that she had sunk six inches into the asphalt, clear past her ankles, like the road was made of mud.
    Now she was scared. She pulled one foot out, then theother, but when she looked up, she knew it was too late; the bus was bearing down on her, and she was about to become roadkill. She screamed as the grill of the bus hit—
    â€”Then she was moving past the driver, through seats and legs and luggage, and finally through a loud grinding engine in the back, and then she was in the open air again. The bus was gone, and her feet were still sinking into the roadway. A trail of leaves and dust swept past her, dragged in the bus’s wake.
    Did I … Did I just pass through a bus?
    â€œSurprise,” said Lief with a funny little smile. “You should see the look on your face!”
----
    Mary Hightower, also known as Mary Queen of Snots, writes in her book
Sorta Dead
that there’s no easy way to tell new arrivals to Everlost that, technically, they are no longer alive. “If you come across a ‘Greensoul,’” as new arrivals are called, it’s best to just be honest and hit them with the truth quickly,” Mary writes. “If necessary, you have to confront them with something they can’t deny, otherwise they just keep on refusing to believe it, and they make themselves miserable. Waking up in Everlost is like jumping into a cold pool. It’s a shock at first, but once you’re in, the water is fine.”
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CHAPTER 3
Dreamless
    L ief, having been so long in his special forest, never had the chance to read any of Mary Hightower’s brilliantly instructional books. Most everything he knew about Everlost, he had learned from experience. For instance, he had quickly learned that dead-spots—that is, places that only the dead can see—are the only places that feel solid to the touch. He could swing from the branches of his dead forest, but once he got past its borders to where the living trees were, he would pass through them as if they weren’t there—or, more accurately—like
he
wasn’t there.
    He didn’t need to read Mary Hightower’s
Tips for Taps
to know that you only need to breathe when you’re talking, or that the only pain you can still feel is pain of the heart, or that memories you don’t hold tightly on to are soon lost. He knew all too well about the memory part. The worst part about it was that no matter how much time passed, you always remembered how many things you’d forgotten.
    Today, however, he had learned something new. Today, Lief learned how long Greensouls slept before awaking to their new afterlife. He had started a count on the day theyarrived, and as of this morning, it was 272 days. Nine months.
    â€œNine months!” Allie yelled. “Are you kidding me?”
    â€œI don’t think he’s the kidding type,” said Nick, who appeared to be actually shivering from the chilliness of the news.
    â€œI was surprised, too,” Lief told them. “I thought you’d never wake up.” He didn’t tell them how every day for nine months he kicked and prodded them, and hit them with sticks hoping it would jar them awake. That was best kept to himself. “Think of it this way,” he said. “It took nine months to get you born, so doesn’t it figure it would take nine months to get you dead?”
    â€œI don’t even remember dreaming,” Nick said, trying hopelessly to loosen his tie.
    Now Allie was shaking a bit, too, at this news of her own death.
    â€œWe don’t dream,” Lief informed them. “So